


roots

by ACatWhoWrites



Category: EXO (Band), K-pop
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Animal Death, Ficmix, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Wilderness Survival, community: kpop-ficmix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-05 18:50:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15869625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ACatWhoWrites/pseuds/ACatWhoWrites
Summary: It feels like roots are holding Jongin in the sand, far away from the sky and the stars.





	roots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [miuyi (rainiest)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainiest/gifts).
  * Inspired by [escape speed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5612401) by [miuyi (rainiest)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainiest/pseuds/miuyi). 



> **warning/s:** While not graphic, there is a bit of description of a neglected animal, and it's death is implied.
> 
> This is essentially the same fic but written from Jongin's point of view, so a lot of the dialogue will sound familiar, because it's taken from the original fic. While I'd hoped to cover a little before _escape speed_ to the end of Jongin's story, I just didn't have the time or drive.
> 
> [Some music](https://8tracks.com/blackcatofmisery/roots-sekai) I kinda had in mind while writing.

Once upon a time, the night sky was filled with visible stars, satellites, and planets. Earth's own satellite shone biggest and brightest of all, still illuminating only a fraction of what the Sun shone.

Now, it's all clouds. They haven't been white since before Jongin was born, but he remembers stories he was told as a child, then Sehun's lectures on the past that he'd read about in books. It's hard to imagine a clear, clean world, because when Jongin closes his eyes, it's dark, and when he opens his eyes, it's still dark. The shifting sands reform the horizon and lift to form the reddish clouds that are always hanging in the air.

For as far as Jongin can see from his perch, it's red. Sehun says Mars is called the Red Planet; maybe Earth is giving it a run for its money.

The rusted-out skeleton of the ship creaks beneath him. He should head back.

Southeast is the direction of home, but he feels like changing it up a bit. Get a bit more exploration in before the day ends. A lot of what he's found has been by accident, meandering like a nomad.

There's still plenty of daylight; he's got time until the pitch darkness of night. Tucking his canteen into his backpack again, Jongin throws it over his shoulder and makes the easy jump onto what used to be the bow of the boat. When the wasteland around him was water, it was probably a fishing boat. Jongin's never seen a fish before, that he can remember. Water is something in bottles rather than massive bodies on the ground. Even the rain isn't really water. Sehun explained the elevated levels of hydrogen ions, once. Some dioxide and another oxide react with water in the atmosphere to make acid, which falls as rain. Either one can be made naturally, so Jongin wonders if their weather in their relatively small part of the world is being effected by storms and volcanoes many miles away.

He wishes he could see them.

Rusted stairs lead from the bow down into the skeletal hold, and Jongin walks out of the scant shelter in the vague direction of home.

Vegetation is scarce; there's nothing to hold back the sand that moves with the slightest breeze. Sometimes a beetle scuttles over the ground, doing whatever beetles do to survive. Jongin drags his hand over his mouth and nose every once in a while, wiping his face with his scarf. Breathing and eating sand is common and a part of life, but that doesn't mean he likes or enjoys it. It'd be a luxury to go a day without bleeding.

Buildings rise like dunes on the horizon; Jongin heads towards them. They seem to belong together, all a similar look with squat, sand-stripped brick exteriors.

“Sciences Building,” Jongin reads to himself. The rest of the name has fallen off and been buried, or it may have been stolen. There's a market for everything and someone willing to supply it.

The main doors are buried, but Jongin finds a more protected side entrance that he cautiously opens. There are obvious drag marks where the door swung outwards, pushing aside the sand that tried to sit against it. Footprints are still visible, as well, as old as a couple minutes to a couple days. He tries to avoid meeting people when he can; not everyone is open to sitting down and chatting about the shitshow of the world's economy or undocumented wilderness miles outside of familiar home.

Most people Jongin's run into have been scavengers. Scavengers don't follow any sort of laws. He has a baton in a pocket of his backpack, sewn so he has to reach between it and his back to pull it out, but he's never used it. He never wants to use it. If others are so willing to fight over this rock and its limited resources, more power to them.

Habit finds him closing the door behind him, and it's not as dark as he'd thought inside. Holes in the ceiling allow light and sand to slip in, and many windows are broken.

He walks down a wide hallway that breaks off into several narrower hallways. Some doors open to stairs leading up or down. Underground is too scary; Jongin always heads up.

Classrooms with abandoned desks and graffiti, garbage, and—of course—sand are the usual. There are lots of books, as well, tossed about because they're nonessential, and glass jars of various sizes litter the desktops and crunch beneath his boots.

Jongin has to struggle to open a solid door; it's held mostly shut with broken piles of furniture. Someone had squatted there, and he hopes they're gone.

A book sits on a dusty shelf, lonely and neglected. “Physics, huh? Sounds like something Sehun would like.” He really can't afford to carry any more weight. The heavier his backpack, the slower he is, and he needs to be quick as night falls.

But Sehun deserves whatever happiness he can find, so Jongin drops the book into his backpack and leaves it on the shelf to stretch his back.

His lower vertebrae has just popped when he hears something strange. It's not the wind, and it's not a door. It's something...animal.

All the hairs rise on his arms, and he slowly looks to his left. A dog, or something dog-like, maybe a wolf or coyote, mangy and more bone than muscle stands between him and the door. The feral snarl of its lips quivers with fear. Jongin is in its home, its sanctuary.

“Hey, girl,” Jongin says softly. From the look of her, she recently had puppies, but he hasn't heard any sounds indicating life during his exploring. He holds out his hands slowly, and the mother dog hunkers lower. He didn't think animals even existed anymore, aside from lizards and scavenging birds. “I'm not here to hurt you. Was this your book? Such a smart dog, being able to read.” Even slower, he reaches for his backpack. He always carries a bit of food with him, snacks high in calories. Sehun explained the technicalities behind to him, saying that carbohydrates provide faster energy, fat more long-burning, and protein replenishes and keeps muscles healthy over time.

Mostly, Jongin takes what he can get. Lots of dried fruits and meats. Weird mixes of nuts in little cans. Whatever doesn't have an expiration date—he tried something with yellow dye number five that was older than he was at the time and regretted it for about three days. Never again. Sehun loved it, though, and had no ill effects. Lucky him.

He knows he has strips of dried meat in the front pocket of his backpack. “Are you hungry?” The dog's lips pull back even more, revealing missing teeth.

Jongin tries to gently toss the meat, and although the emaciated dog does flinch, she doesn't run away or attack him. She focuses solely on the food, eating it so fast she chokes and coughs harshly. Carefully, Jongin inches closer, offering a piece of meat by hand, which she takes with only a wary glance.

Soon, they're within one another's bubbles, and the dog's tail is wagging as she sniffs Jongin's person for more food. He offers her water and pets her scruffy fur. There's a sound like a squeaky door, followed by the foulest odor Jongin's ever smelled. “Yeah,” he coughs. “That's how I felt after that yellow number five.”

There's no way Jongin can bring the dog home with him. It's more than a couple hours away, and he can't carry her. Sehun would probably turn her away, citing the amount of food and water she'd need and potential parasites and diseases she's carrying.

“I'm sorry, girl.” Jongin rubs the ear that isn't pink and hot to the touch as they sit together on the floor. She seems quite content on his lap and whines when lifted. “I can't take you with me.” Her tail wags a couple times while she watches him shoulder his backpack. 

“I won't say no to company while I explore a little more, though?” He pauses by the door, and she stands at his heel, following close when Jongin slows to a more measured pace.

There's a sort of storage filled with liquids and powders and larger particles of things that Sehun should appreciate. Jongin grabs at least one of each, praying they don't break in his backpack. Some even have little caution stickers on them; Sehun likes combustibles. At the end of the hall is a pair of double doors with a simple plaque.

“Oh. 'Library.' Sehun would love this.” The dog seems to agree based on instinct and paws at the door, but she shrinks back when they open. Her hackles raise as much as they can, and she reverts back to the mean dog Jongin first met, but rather than facing him and blocking his exit, she's standing between him and the depths of the rows upon rows of abandoned books.

“What is it?” Jongin can't see clearly, but he hears a faint grunt and ducks as something sails through the space his head had been.

It explodes behind him, and the dog charges forward with an incredible amount of energy for a starving thing. Jongin hears a scream and bolts back the way he'd come.

There's another explosion, far away from him, and then silence. Jongin hides in a bathroom stall until his heartbeat evens out, then ventures back towards the library.

Glass shards litter the hall. Without the sand, his footsteps would give him away. There are shiny spots where glass and sand melted beneath an instant of high heat.

Hopefully, he tosses a piece of meat into the library and waits, but there's no movement from the dog or anyone else.

He finds the closest stairs and makes his way out of the building, backpack dragging his shoulders back and making him feel heavy, like roots are growing up from the ground to cling to his legs. His toe drags, and he nearly trips, catching himself just to sit in the sand out in the open. Everything is the same yellowish hue. If he looks closer, there are shades of brown, red, and gray. Clear particles and white particles. Thrown around by the wind, it'll all beat at anything and everything until it's all sand blasted to a uniformity of ugliness. Even the sky is yellow, turning redder as the day wears to night. On 'clear' days, everything is beige—hiding whatever lives up in the sky and beyond—but there is always a physical weight in the air. They breathe in the dust and sand; it settles in their lungs and pops around like carbonation. Everything they eat has a fine layer of dust at best and is caked in it, but they chew and swallow and pick silica from their teeth.

Jongin really wished for something good to come out of this life. Maybe all he can do is offer a stray animal a bit of kindness and compassion at the end of theirs. Maybe that's all anyone can do for anyone else, digging away a little bit of the sand to show something comforting beneath the desperation and raw survival instinct.

He doesn't realize he's crying until his face feels itchy. His scarf stains dark with smears with wet sand, and now he has sand on the inside of his scarf, but oh well. He'll live.

He'll keep existing.

With greater effort than usual, Jongin gets back up on his feet and regains his bearings from the front of the building with the partly-missing sign. He walks steadily but briskly as the sky deepens to a rust red. Soon, the occasional breeze has kicked up to a persistent wind with bellows of strong gusts that nearly knock Jongin off his feet. He can only trust his instinct and sense of direction that he's still heading the right way.

Maybe he shouldn't have taken a different route home, but it's too late to change that, now.

The sudden storm surges behind him, kicking up even more sand and throwing it everywhere like a child having a temper tantrum. As he walks, he fishes in his backpack for his canteen and pours what little is left over his scarf, making a filter that will catch the worst of the sand and prevent him from breathing it all in. He feels the sting of the tiny sediment striking his face and tries to shield his eyes with his hand.

As bad as the storm is, it could be worse, a little optimistic voice says, because it's moving east to west rather then west to east, so it's working _with_ Jongin and trying to fling him _towards_ home rather than away.

Back when they were just teenagers, he and Sehun had chosen their house carefully. It's a great distance away from the sharehouses and the hoarding laws of the safe zone, and it sits on the outskirts of the destroyed city, so there is little incentive to attract the attention of thugs and thieves.

Usually, when the days are clear, Jongin can confidently maneuver around the detritus and rubble, but he trips and stumbles repeatedly on abandoned cars and traffic lights and upended electrical poles. That's how he knows he's close.

Finally, after skirting around what used to be a sporty imported car, he's on the front steps of his house. It looks abandoned, like everything else around them. They had agreed to keep the doors and windows locked all the time. It's a more unappealing target for scavengers, who avoid extra work based on principle. It's also a more difficult obstacle for them when they're trying to get inside in a hurry.

Hands covering his face, Jongin kicks the door and hollers, " _Let me in, Sehun!_ There's a storm out here!" If he's immersed in his nerd cave experiments, so help him...

The door flies inward the moment it's unlocked, and Jongin doesn't wait to barrel inside, pushing Sehun back bodily and inviting harsh wind and sand. Sehun slams the door shut behind him, and the sand settles. The coldness remains, however, and they both shiver, even standing so close.

There's a moment of suspended silence while Jongin pulls his scarf from his face and pushes his hood back, then Sehun tears into him. "What the hell, Jongin?" he seethes. "Do you know what time it is? Nightfall was four hours ago.” He throws his fingers up between them emphatically. “ _Four._ "

Sand clinging to Jongin's hair flies as he shakes his head. He tries to wipe as much as he can off his dry lips. "I know. I'm sorry, I took a different route and lost track of time."

Sehun stares at him like he grew an extra head. "Lost track of— _oh,_ my god. I _warned you_ there'd be a storm. I _told_ you to be back well before sunset. People die out there, Jongin!"

Jongin struggles with his boots, not really paying attention to his friend's rant and lecture. It's usually best to wait them out, like waiting out the storms. "I know." Finally, he frees his feet and pours sand from either boot onto the floor. It's why the floorboards never creak. That, and Jongin acts as their handyman. He's usually the one to break things, anyway.

Once Sehun's extinguished his vocabulary of insults, he hovers over Jongin like an anxious hen, making sure all of him has made it back. "You're bleeding," he says softly. He points to his own nose when Jongin looks at him, and Jongin wipes his face with his sleeve. "You can't take risks like that, Jongin. It's not worth it."

And Jongin gets it. Sehun worries; it's his thing, his passion, second only to geeking out over covalent bonds and whatever velocities.

Jongin takes his friend by the shoulders and looks him in the eyes. "Sehun. _It's okay_. I am okay." He doesn't think about the dog and his breakdown outside the university and hopes Sehun can't read him as well as he thinks.

It seems to work, because Sehun nods and takes a deep, shaky breath. “Okay...But sweep your gross foot sand out of the entryway, _or so help me_ I'll pour it in your bed.” His threat would carry greater weight if Jongin could actually act on it. With the wind beating against their house, there's nowhere for his _gross foot sand_ to go. “Once this storm is over,” Sehun amends.

Jongin breathes a laugh out of his nose and steps around Sehun, heading to their worn dining table. “I found something for you,” he teases vaguely. Sehun rarely leaves the house. When he does, he doesn't go far. That's Jongin's thing. He'll meander the sandy landscape and find treasures like food, clothing, and other supplies as well as the occasional luxury item, such as books.

"You found a _Giancoli_?” Sehun says the author's name like some used to say _da Vinci_. Jongin doesn't know the guy from Adam, but he recognized the book's contents about physics as something Sehun would enjoy. “Oh man, I thought these went out of print years ago! Where'd you find it?"

"In a university.” With a mad bomber. “They had tons of 'em, all stacked in a closet." He avoids Sehun's curious look as he bends the truth.

"You've never mentioned anything about a university before."

"I've never been before. Like I said, I took a different route."

"Oh." That's that. Jongin can eat and go to bed. 

Sometimes, unfortunately, Sehun's perceptive. "Jongin..." He says Jongin's name like a plea for reason. It's a tone Jongin knows very well, one that carries the weight of unsaid lectures about the dangers of being outside and not following a set route, of bandits and thugs and acid and hundreds of other things that could go wrong and are dangerous and stupid.

But Jongin's willing to face a lot of things for Sehun.

"It's fine. I wanted to." He tries not to pout, but he can feel the tug at his lips and sees the conflict in his friend's awkward shifting. His face is often a mask of stoicism, but Jongin's learned to read the micro-expressions and posture to see that while he's frustrated with Jongin's repeated poor decisions and foolish habits, he's also pleased with the gift.

Before he's even finished fumbling through his thanks, Jongin's holding his backpack over the table, dumping out a dozen containers. "I found these, too! There must have been hundreds, but I didn't know what they were, so I just grabbed one from every shelf." Variety. Now that he knows where they are, he can potentially go back to resupply.

Book momentarily forgotten, Sehun paws through the jars, reading labels Jongin can't begin to pronounce like they're the most wondrous things in the corporeal world. "This one's Cyclohexane! I've been wanting a non-polar solvent for months...” He opens the jar and smells its contents, and Jongin distinctly remembers being reprimanded for doing just that with one of the chemicals Sehun has stocked in his nerd cave. “Ugh...” He coughs a little. “Yep, definitely Cyclohexane. It'll have to stay warm, or it'll turn solid.” He gently shakes another jar, marveling at the silvery powder inside. “Is this nickel? Holy shit, do you know how many reactions I can catalyze with this?"

Jongin could watch Sehun geek out all day. It's all Greek to him, but it's nice seeing Sehun so animated and lively. "No fucking idea.” His stomach growls at him. “Have you got any food?" Sehun wordlessly passes him a partly-eaten can of stew. It'd be better warm, but he can't complain. Food is food.

Sehun gathers his new materials in his arms and heads for the garage, his nerd cave, muttering about doing some kind of trial or something. Jongin just hopes he doesn't blow a hole in the ceiling again. "I'm gonna try to catalog these before I go tomorrow.”

Jongin doesn't remember him mentioning plans about going anywhere. "You're leaving?"

Sehun turns and walks backwards, rolling his eyes to the ceiling, obviously lying. "I've gotta get back. Dad's probably wondering where I am."

"Okay... Remember to take the tea." Truthfully, Jongin kind of wishes Sehun would stop visiting his dad. He's more alcohol than man by now, a pickled shell of a human. It seems more humane to put him down rather than bring him supplies and simply extend his existence, but Sehun's kind of sentimental about humanity. He remembers stories from his mother and the times when his father was actually an active part of his life.

Maybe Jongin's a little bitter. His sisters just up and left him one day. Said 'goodbye,' and that was that. Sehun's dad is at least still around. There's a glimmer of wishful thinking that Sehun not giving up on his dad will bring out the residual human being in him and pull him back to the way he used to be. Jongin likes to think he's a good friend, but he's nothing like a father.

"I'll be back tomorrow,” Sehun promises. He adds some solid reasoning: “You need a good sleep, anyway." When he gets into his science stuff, he can sometimes forget that bubbling and clattering and crackling are not soothing sounds to everyone.

Sleep sounds amazing, and Jongin relents with a yawn. "Yeah, okay. Have fun with your electromagnetic... whatever."

The garage door closes on Sehun's response, and Jongin's alone at the table. His appetite leaves him, but he forces himself to finish the can and leaves it in the sink. He pulls his backpack towards him, examining the little tears and pulled threads; he'll have to do some repairs before going out again.

It'll have to wait, though. As the storm rages on, the weight in Jongin's body makes itself known again. He shuffles to their worn sofa, drops onto it, and passes out. Dreams are the only place he can see the sky and the stars Sehun's told him about, free from the roots holding him in the sand.


End file.
